


jump the tracks

by weekend_conspiracy_theorist



Series: Leather Jackets and Lab Coats [8]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:30:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5569216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekend_conspiracy_theorist/pseuds/weekend_conspiracy_theorist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Lisa Snart wakes up alone, and one time she doesn't.</p><p>(Stands alone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	jump the tracks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_warm_beige_color](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_warm_beige_color/gifts).



1.

Lisa’s drifting. There’s fog everywhere around her, thick and soft and yielding, and her limbs feel heavy. Her eyes are closed—she should lift them, but all she can feel is fog; she’s sure there’s nothing to look at.

She stays there for an unknowable length of time, and then she hears a ticking, as if of a clock. There’s a voice, muffled and distant, and Lisa has no idea what it’s saying. Maybe she should open her eyes; she could read the person’s lips, if they aren’t too far from her.

Her eyelids don’t open when she asks them to.

(That’s fine; she wasn’t that curious anyway.)

The fog is lifting, its pull on her limbs lessening. There’s a dull throbbing on her side, and Lisa feels herself drifting with the pulse of it, bobbing within this limbo she’s found herself in—

Oh. She’s been injured. There’s no fog, only pain medications.

Lisa opens her eyes.

Lenny’s off on an adventure through time, so there’s no one at her bedside to stop her as she struggles to sit up, to push back the thin blanket and sheet covering her and peer at the bandages around her waist.

(Dr. Snow and Cisco are in the other room, talking in low voices. It takes them nearly twenty minutes to realize Lisa’s woken up and checked herself out of their make-shift hospital.)

2.

“Come home with me,” Lisa says, drunk and blunt and peering intently into Caitlin’s eyes. They’ve run into each other at a bar, been sucked into each other’s orbits in lieu of anyone better—drinking with an antagonistic acquaintance is better than drinking alone.

Caitlin’s eyes are tired, rimmed with smudges of dark skin that say she’s not here for the ambiance. (Her past is haunting her, memories dogging her footsteps and dancing under her eyelids when she tries to sleep.)

“My husband is dead,” is how she answers Lisa.

Lisa throws back the last of her drink, eyes closed. She and Roscoe never got that far, but still, she gets it. She shoves back from the bar, her stool screeching on the hardwood and teetering precariously, and leans in to press whiskey-flavored lips to Caitlin’s cheek.

“Call a cab and go find one of your friends,” she advises, and stumbles the block back to her apartment, throws herself into bed without toeing off her boots.

(Her mouth tastes awful when she wakes up in the morning, surrounded by tangled sheets and smudges of makeup.)

3.

“I brought wine and _Steel Magnolias_ ,” Caitlin says, holding out her offerings with an awkward smile on her face. She looks better than she did last time Lisa saw her—more put together, less tired.

“Planning to get drunk and weepy?” Lisa asks, steps aside. (She’s never given Caitlin her address; she wonders how she knew it. Why she’s come, why she chose this night.)

Caitlin hums, slips past Lisa—her perfume is light, softly floral, vaguely minty. Lisa sways towards the scent thoughtlessly, hand still on the doorknob, and Caitlin doesn’t notice. Her eyes are scanning the room, taking in the perfectly choreographed disarray, the cats sleeping on the back of the couch.

Lisa clears her throat, presses the door closed. She takes the bottle of wine from Caitlin’s lax grip, tells her, “The DVD player’s standard, sweetcheeks. Have at while I get this opened.”

“Shoes?” Caitlin asks.

Lisa blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“Do you—” Caitlin motions to the floor, a faint flush on her cheeks. “On your carpet, can I wear my shoes or should I…?”

Lisa looks down at her own bare toes, shrugs. “I’ve had to clean blood and cat puke out of it so many times, I think it can take a bit of mud.”

“I’ll take them off,” Caitlin says, decisively.

Lisa shrugs again, slips past her towards the kitchen. She uncorks the wine—by the time she reemerges, Caitlin is tucked into one corner of the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest, the menu screen playing soft music on repeat. Lisa sets the wine bottle on her coffee table, flops down on the other end of the couch and presses play on the remote.

They get drunk on cheap wine, and Caitlin cries on Lisa’s shoulder when Julia Roberts dies.

(She’s gone when Lisa wakes up in the morning, stretched all the way across the couch.)

4.

“Come home with me,” Lisa says. She’s drunk and blunt and knows she was wrong when she said they were caught in each other’s orbits. They’re on parallel paths, moving forward and moving forward and never touching.

Time to jump the tracks, Lisa thinks.

“Yeah, okay,” Caitlin says, and she reaches out to drag Lisa in for a kiss. (She tastes like mint and tequila.)

It takes them forever to walk the block back to Lisa’s apartment, leaning heavily into each other’s sides and smothering laughter with their lips. A man in a black truck drives past, leans out the window to shout at them, and Lisa doesn’t retaliate, the fingers of one hand tucked into the pocket of Caitlin’s jeans.

She fumbles her keys at the door, Caitlin’s lips on her neck, and they trip over shoes and clothes and cats and coffee tables on their way to her bedroom. They pause on the threshold, half undressed and panting for breath, and Caitlin tells Lisa, “I can’t stay the night.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” Lisa admits, hands on Caitlin’s hips, and Caitlin surges up to kiss her once more.

5.

Lisa knocks on Caitlin’s door. Her heart is pounding and she feels ridiculous, but—her hands tighten to white knuckle grips, she forces out a breath. “You can do this,” she mutters, squeezing her eyes shut, and the door swings open.

Her eyes flick open.

Caitlin looks good, happy, and Lisa likes to think she played a small part in that. (Hopes she didn’t make the healing process harder, at least.)

“I brought Diet Coke and _Speed Racer_ ,” Lisa tells her, shoving the movie and the sodas forward. “We need to spend some time together where neither of us is playing an angle, drugged, or drunk.”

Caitlin stares at her, eyes wide with surprise, but when Lisa steps forward, she steps back. Throws the door wider so Lisa can enter. The apartment is small, neat, all cool colors and neutrals. Her TV is bigger than Lisa’s, and there’s not the lingering smell of pet dander.

“You can stick the sodas in the freezer,” Caitlin says. “I’ll take the movie.”

“Shoes?” Lisa asks, a smile threatening to spread across her lips, and Caitlin lets out a huff, rolls her eyes as she snatches the movie away.

“Guess,” she throws over her shoulder, glancing down at the organized lines of shoes next to the door, and Lisa laughs.

 _Speed Racer_ turns into a _Mario Kart_ competition, and they tumble into Caitlin’s bed, fully clothed, sometime around two in the morning. They’re both asleep in minutes, Lisa curled tightly, Caitlin pressed to her back, an arm thrown around her waist.

Lisa wakes up to a cold, empty bed with vague memories of Caitlin slipping away, of a murmuring voice telling Lisa to go back to sleep. There’s a post-it on the bedside table, “SORRY, FLASH BUSINESS” scrawled out in tiny, messy letters.

Lisa stares at the ceiling, lets out a sigh—she’s not sure if it’s regret or amusement pulsing through her.

Maybe both.

+1

Lisa rolls over, the sheet tugging and pulling at her legs, and studies the sleeping form next to her. Caitlin’s flat on her stomach, head turned away from Lisa, thick waves of hair sprawling across the rest of her pillow.

Lisa reaches out, prods lightly at Caitlin’s shoulder, receives a vague grunt in return.

“You’re still here,” Lisa says.

Caitlin turns so the opposite cheek is resting on the pillow, tosses her hair out of her way. Her eyes are unfocused, bleary with sleep, a frown creasing the skin between her brows. “I’ve spent the night before, Lisa,” she mumbles. “What’s your point?”

“Nothing.” Lisa tugs on a stray lock of Caitlin’s hair, a little grin on her face. “Just happy.”

Caitlin fumbles a hand out from under the sheets, grabbing Lisa’s as she lets her eyes drift closed. “Me, too.”


End file.
